Accepting Being – Ontological Agnosticism offers a deep and original exploration of the nature of being and the limits of human knowledge. Through rigorous reflection, this book develops a position of ontological agnosticism, affirming the impossibility of fully conceptualizing being while acknowledging its existence. Challenging the traditional foundations of metaphysics, it calls for radical humility in the face of the unknowable and opens a new path for thinking about existence, human responsibility, and knowledge.
Note: This work is primarily intended for readers with a basic background in philosophy. It is not aimed at those seeking a simplified introduction.
What if our entire claim to understand being was nothing more than a well-crafted illusion?
The Fundamental Enigma invites us to think differently — not to explain, but to inhabit the mystery of existence. Through a lucid and radically honest approach, the author proposes a new stance: philophronesis — a form of wisdom that rejects dogma, certainty, and conceptual systems. This book is for those who feel that something resists, despite all our theories. A philosophical journey that is embodied, accessible, and profoundly subversive.
Here you will find a series of Phronetic articles, written in a spirit of rigor and critical freedom. Each text develops a problem, a thesis, and an open reflection, echoing the themes addressed in my books. This is also the space where I publish the ideas that evolve between two works.
Johnny Picknell holds university training in epistemology and gnoseology. His interest in classical and Boolean logic is part of in-depth research on knowledge, whether scientific or general. With more than 25 years of experience in teaching, he is now retired, but continues to invest himself in philosophical reflection. This essay testifies to his desire to better understand the astonishing distance that separates our ideas from reality, without claiming to reduce this gap, but by accepting the complexity and mystery inherent in this relationship. Johnny Picknell claims radical heterodoxy: he privileges free, critical and independent thought, refusing all passive adherence to ready-made ideas.
Epistemology Awareness Being Scientific method philophronesis Human finitude Absolute certainty Responsibility Liberty Science and belief Limit of knowledge Cosmology Existence Truth Metaphysics Secular spirituality Ethics Philosophical void Meaning of life Conceptual illusions reality Doubt Welcoming reality Relationship to being Ontological agnosticim philosophy Illusion of knowledge